'I think I 'll go over and see Toffy,' said Peter to himself one day in
the following week. Mr. Semple had been down to Bowshott again,
bringing a mass of correspondence with him, and had left that morning.
Nigel Christopherson was ill at Hulworth with one of his usual
appalling colds, which brought him as nearly as possible to the grave
every time they attacked him. Peter once again read through the
letters and papers which he and the family lawyer had pored over until
the small hours of this morning, and then he ordered his horse and rode
over to see his friend.
No one ever arrived at Hulworth without remarking on the almost
grotesque ugliness of the house. It was a flat-faced, barrack-like
residence, with a stuccoed front and rows of ill-designed windows. A
grim-looking flight of stone stairs with iron railings led to the front
door, and beyond that were large and hideous rooms filled with
treasures of art incongruously hung on lamentable wall-papers or
pendent over pieces of furniture which would have made a connoisseur's
eyes ache. The house and its furnishings were a strange mixture; the
owner of the grim pile, be it said, had a mind which presented a blank
to the dictates of art, and it puzzled him sorely to determine which of
his possessions was beautiful and which was not. He had heard people
become enthusiastic over his pictures, which he thought hideous, while
they had frankly abused his furniture, which he was inclined to think
was everything that was desirable.
'There 's only one way,' he used to say hopelessly, 'in which a fellow
can know whether a thing is ugly or the reverse, and that is by fixing
a price to it. If only some one would be kind enough to stick on a lot
of labels telling me what the things are worth I should know what to
admire and what to shudder at; but, as it is, the things which I
personally like are always the things which other people abuse.'
And, alas for Sir Nigel and his lightly held treasures of art! his
pictures and the vases ranged in great glass cases in the hall were
heirlooms, and Toffy in his most impecunious days would often look at
them sadly and shake his head, murmuring to himself, 'I 'd take five
hundred pounds for the lot, and be glad to get rid of them.' There
were days when in a gentle, philosophical way he felt a positive sense
of injury in thinking of the vases behind the big glass doors, and he
would then go into intricate and complicated sums in arithmetic whereby
he could tell what it cost him per annum to look at the contents of the
cases and the old portraits in their dim frames.
This afternoon he was lying on a florid and uncomfortable-looking sofa
in a very large drawing-room, in front of a fireplace of white marble
in scroll patterns and with a fender of polished steel. It was
probably the ugliest as well as the least comfortable room in the
house, but it happened to be the only one in which there was a good
fire that afternoon; and Toffy, descending from his bedroom, weak and
ill with influenza, had come in there at two o'clock, and was now lying
down with a railway-rug placed across his feet, and his head
uncomfortably supported by a hard roller-cushion and an ornamentation
in mahogany which gracefully finished off the pattern of the
sofa-frame. Many men when they are ill take the precaution of making
their wills; Sir Nigel's preparation for a possible early demise always
took the form of elaborately and sadly adding up his accounts. He had
a large ledger beside him on the sofa, and slips of paper covered with
intricate figures which neither he nor any one else could decipher.
His faithful valet Hopwood had been dispatched to London in order to
learn chauffeur's work; for Toffy had decided, after working the matter
out to a fraction, that a considerable saving could be effected in this
way. His debts to the garage were being duly entered amongst Toffy's
liabilities at this moment as he lay on the sofa in the vast cold
drawing-room.
The drawing-room was not often used now. But it was the custom of his
housekeeper to air the rooms once a week; and, this being Wednesday,
she had lighted a fire there, while Lydia, a young housemaid and
general factotum, had allowed all other fires to go out. There was a
palpable sense of chilliness about the room, and in one corner of it
the green-and-gold wall-paper showed stains of damp. Long gilded
mirrors between tall windows occupied one side of the room, and had
marble shelves beneath them upon which were placed ornate Bohemian
glass vases and ormolu clocks and candlesticks. Some uncovered and
highly polished mahogany tables imparted a hard and somewhat undraped
look to the apartment. The windows, with their aching lines of
plate-glass, were draped with rep curtains of vivid green, while the
floor was covered with an Aubusson carpet exquisite in its colour and
design. And between the green woollen bell-ropes on each side of the
fireplace and above the cold hideousness of the marble mantelpiece hung
a portrait by Romney of a lady as beautiful as a flower.
Sir Nigel had endeavoured to eat for lunch part of a chicken which
his housekeeper had warmed up with a little grey sauce; and he was
now wondering as he lay on the sofa whether any one would come if
he were to tug at the green bell-rope over his head, or whether he
could make his own way upstairs to his bedroom and get some fresh
pocket-handkerchiefs. He had had a temperature for the greater part
of the week, and he was now feeling as if his legs did not altogether
belong to him; while, to make up for their feebleness and lightness,
his head was most insistently there, and felt horribly hot and heavy.
He had just decided that he had better mount the long stairs to his
room, for not only was there the consideration of handkerchiefs; there
was medicine too which the doctor had told him to take, but which he
always forgot at the right moment. He thought the journey had better
be made now, and he could do the two things at one and the same time.
He walked with uneven steps to the window and looked out upon some
stretches of field which were euphemistically termed the Park, and
watched a flock of sheep huddled together to protect themselves from
the first sharp touch of frost, when he heard the sound of hoofs and
saw Peter ride up to the door.
'It's an extraordinary thing,' he said to himself as he saw his friend
dismount, 'Peter always seems to come when you want him. I believe he
has got some sort of instinct which tells him when his friends are down
on their luck!'
Peter would, of course, fetch the medicine from upstairs, and the
pocket-handkerchiefs. Toffy wondered if he had ever felt ill in his
life, and thought to himself, gazing without envy at the neat, athletic
figure on the horse, what a good fellow he was. He crept back to the
sofa again, and extending his thin hand to Peter as he entered, said,
'You see here the wreck of my former self! Sit down, Peter, and ring
for tea; there isn't the smallest chance of your getting any!'
'Why didn't you come to Bowshott, you ass, if you are ill?' said Peter
sternly. 'You will kill yourself some day coming down to this
half-warmed barn in the winter-time.'
'It isn't half warmed,' said Toffy. 'I wish it were! This room is all
right, isn't it? I aired another sofa by sleeping on it last night.'
'What on earth for?' demanded Peter, still in a tone of remonstrance.
Toffy had been his fag at Eton, and Peter had got into the habit of
taking care of him. He knew his friend's constitution better than most
people did, and he expended much affection upon him, and endeavoured
without any success to make him take care of himself. 'Why didn't you
sleep in your bed like a Christian?' he demanded sternly. 'You will
kill yourself if you go on playing the fool with your health!'
'The sheets seemed a bit damp in my bed, I thought,' said Toffy simply.
'Then why didn't your idiot of a housekeeper air them?'
'The duty of airing sheets is invested in the person of one Lydia, the
niece of the above-mentioned housekeeper,' said Toffy. 'I asked her in
the morning if my sheets had been aired, and she said that they had
not. She further explained that she had taken the precaution of
feeling them, and that they had not seemed very wet!'
'Oh, hang Mrs. Avory!' said Peter inwardly. 'Why has not Toffy got a
good wife to look after him? Look here,' he said decisively, 'I am
going to sleep over here to-night, and see that you go to bed, and I'm
going to get your sheets now and warm 'em.'
'You 'll get a beastly dinner if you stay,' said Toffy through his nose.
Peter brought the sheets down in a bundle, and placing a row of hideous
walnut-wood chairs with their legs in the fender, he proceeded to tinge
the fine linen sheets a deep brown.
'They are warmed through,' he said grimly, when the smell of scorched
linen became intrusive.
Peter made tea in the drawing-room and spilt a good deal of boiling
water on the steel fender, and then he drew the green rep curtains
across the cold windows, and made up a roaring fire, and pulled a
screen round the sofa. He fetched his friend's forgotten medicine from
his bedroom and administered it, and told him with a lame attempt at
jocosity that he should have a penny if he took it like a lamb! Peter
was full of small jokes this afternoon, and full, too, of a certain
restlessness which had not expended itself when he had warmed sheets
and made up fires and brewed tea to the destruction of the Hulworth
steel fenders. He talked cheerfully on a dozen topics of conversation
current in the neighbourhood, and on Toffy's invitation he sent a
servant over to Bowshott to give notice that he would stay the night,
and to bring back his things.
'I have been doing up my accounts,' said Toffy, 'and I believe the
saddest book I ever read is my bank-book! A man has been down from the
British Museum to look at those vases in the hall, and he says that one
of them alone is worth four thousands pounds!--four thousand pounds,
Peter! for a vase that's eating its head off in a glass case, and might
be broken any day by a housemaid, while I perish with hunger!'
'If it's money,' began Peter easily, 'you 're an idiot if you don't let
me know what you want.'
And then the whole realization of his uncertain position smote him
sharply and cruelly for a moment as he remembered that he did not know
how he stood with the world as regards money, and that probably he was
not in the position to lend a five-pound note to any one. He had
accumulated through sheer laziness a certain number of large debts, the
payment of which had never troubled himself or his creditors, who were
only too glad to keep his name on their books; but now it seemed that
if he were to have merely a younger son's portion he might even find
himself in debt to his brother's estate. He had gone thoroughly with
the lawyer into the will of his father, and found that everything which
it was possible to tie up on the elder son had been willed to him. His
own share of the patrimony if his brother were still alive would be but
a small one.
He got up from his chair and walked to the window, and pulling aside
the curtain looked out on the frosty garden.
'It's going to be a bitter cold night,' he said. 'I think I will just
look in at your room again, and see if they have made up the fire
properly.'
He returned to the drawing-room and took up two or three newspapers in
turn and laid them down again, while Toffy watched him gravely.
'I 've had a bit of a jar lately,' he said at last, taking up his stand
with his back to the fire near the sofa.
'Have some dinner first,' said Toffy, 'and then we 'll go into the
matter, as I always do with my creditors. You see, if one has a cook
like Mrs. Cosby, there is an element of chance in the matter of getting
dinner at all; and another thing is it may be so bad you won't survive
it; so it's not much use being miserable before dinner, is it, when
perhaps you may be buried comfortably and respectably afterwards?'
The presence of Lydia, who listened open-mouthed to all that was said,
made conversation impossible, until at last, in an ecstasy of
importance at having broken a dessert dish, she placed the wine upon
the table and withdrew. Toffy carried the decanters into the
drawing-room, where he believed he and Peter would be more comfortable,
and having placed them on the table by the fire he congratulated his
friend that they had both survived the ordeal of dinner, and then he
suggested that Peter should tell him what was up.
'Rather a beastly thing has happened,' said Peter. He rose from the
chair where he was sitting and went and stood by the marble
mantelpiece. The black tie which he wore seemed to accentuate his
fairness, and it was a boyish, unheroic figure which leaned against the
whiteness of the marble mantelpiece as he began his puzzling tale. It
did not take very long in the telling, and until he had finished Toffy
did not speak. Indeed, there was silence for some time in the room
after Peter had done, and then, there being no necessity for much
speech or protestation between the two, Toffy said merely, 'What are
you going to do?'
'I am going to the Argentine next week,' said Peter. 'It seems proved
beyond any manner of doubt that my mother paid the passage of a woman
and a little boy to go there in the very month and in the year that my
brother was supposed to have died, and Cintra or Lisbon are the last
places where there is even the vaguest evidence of her having been seen
with two boys.'
Toffy lay on the sofa thinking, his arm thrown above his head in the
attitude that was characteristic of him during the many weeks of
illness that he usually had in the year.
'I can't think why,' he said, 'you should go yourself. There must be
plenty of lawyers in Buenos Ayres who would undertake to see the thing
through for you.'
'Well, come,' said Peter, 'if my brother has been done out of the place
for twenty-five years, and if he is a good chap, and all that, I
suppose the least one could do would be to try and look as if one
didn't grudge giving him back his own.'
Probably there is an element of fairness about English men and women
which obtrudes itself from time to time to their disadvantage; and
Peter already found himself occupying, in his own mind at least, the
position of the younger son.
'We will brave the terrors of the vasty deep together,' said Toffy;
'it's no use your going alone.'
'You ain't up to it,' said Peter gruffly, 'thanks all the same, old
chap.'
'I must fly somewhere,' said Toffy, 'it doesn't much matter where.'
'Has the usual acute financial crisis come?' Peter said, looking
affectionately at the long, thin figure on the sofa. 'You can't the
least deceive me into thinking you had better go into Argentine to hunt
for a man who has been missing for twenty-five years. It isn't good
enough!'
'I shall have to get a lot of boots,' said Toffy thoughtfully; 'it
seems the right sort of thing to do when one is starting on an
expedition, and I would rather like to get some of those knives that
fellows seem to buy when they go out to South America.'
'You see,' objected Peter, allowing the question of boots and
hunting-knives to lapse, 'the place is right enough, I have no doubt,
but it's pretty big, and I don't a bit know what is in front of me. I
'll tell you what I will do, though, I 'll send for you as soon as I
get there if I find it's a white man's country at all, and then we will
jog round together.'
'I suppose we couldn't go in a yacht?' said Toffy, inspired with a
sudden suggestion, and sitting up on the sofa full of grave interest.
'There 'd be much less chance of being copped on the pier than if one
travelled on a liner. Another thing, I 'm not at all sure that a yacht
wouldn't be a good investment; it really is the only way to live
economically and keep out of the reach of duns at the same time. A
nice little eighty-tonner now, for instance, with Just two or three
hands and a boy on board. What could be cheaper than that? And you
could live the simple life to any extent that you liked! But of course
something larger would be wanted for Argentine, and she couldn't be
fitted out in time. No, Peter, I think I 'll risk having the heavy
hand of the law laid upon me at starting, and we 'll just have to lump
it and go in a mail steamer.'
Peter laughed. 'My bold buccaneer!' he said.
They sat silent for a time in the drawing-room with its crude colours
and priceless china, while the big fire in the burnished steel grate
roared with a jolly sound up the big chimney, and the air was frosty
and cold outside. The room despite its hideousness was full of
pleasant recollections to them both, for when Hulworth was not let
Toffy had often assembled bachelor parties there, and it had always
been a second home to Peter, where he had been wont to keep a couple of
guns and some of his 'things.'
The actual journey to Argentine was not a matter demanding any courage
on the part of either of the young men, but the result of the journey
might have a grave effect on the fortune of Peter Ogilvie. Tomorrow
was to have been his wedding-day; and this fact being persistently
present to both men, they left the subject to the last. It was with an
effort that Peter said, before they parted for the night, 'Whatever
happens, we mean to try to be married when I come back. Jane is
awfully plucky about it, but this confounded Court of Chancery does not
seem to regard me with much favour at present.'
'It's only for a year,' said Toffy hopefully. 'Let's make a solemn
covenant that we shall meet in this very room on the 25th of October
1911, with the wedding-day fixed for to-morrow again.'
'Where is your Bible?' said Peter. 'If you haven't one in your pocket
or under your pillow, will it do if I kiss your account-book?'
'The whole thing can be just as we intended it to be,' said Toffy
cheerfully. 'And this time next year Jane will be staying with Miss
Abingdon, and old Wrot will be ironing out his surplice--at least Mrs.
Wrot will, and he 'll look on and think he 's doing it. And I 'll be
here, probably with a cold in my head as usual, and thereto I plight
thee my troth!'
He fingered in his pocket the wedding-ring which Peter had given him
for safe custody, and the care of which had seriously disturbed his
slumbers at night. 'I 'll keep the ring until then, Peter, and place
it on the third finger of Jane's left hand. No, no, you do that, by
the way; and I shall have to wait until I get a wife of my own.'
'Here 's to her good health!' said Peter. And they endeavoured to be
lively, as befits the subject of weddings; but Peter was thinking that
perhaps his own wedding-day might be five years hence, and however they
might plan that it should be the same as they had first intended, it
was a long time to wait. And Toffy was wondering how long Horace Avory
meant to live, and if Carrie would mind very much his going to
Argentine, and whether she would write him one of those long
tear-blistered letters in her indistinct handwriting, which he found so
hard to read, and, suppose Horace Avory never died (as seemed quite
likely), what would be the end of it all? Also, he wondered whether
Carrie and Miss Sherard would get on well together if they were to
meet, and he hoped with manly stupidity that they might be friends.
But what he wondered more than anything else at present was whether
Kitty Sherard would allow him to go and say good-bye to her. Toffy was
feeling ill, and his vitality was low; in his weakness he thought with
an insistence that was almost homesick in its intensity how beautiful
it would be to see her in this ugly old house of his, in one of her
rose-coloured gowns, and with her brown curls and her hopelessly
baffling and bewildering manner of speech.
And each of the two young men, being absorbed in quite other subjects,
talked cheerfully of the voyage, and speculated on what sort of sport
they might incidentally get; and they discussed much more seriously the
fishing flies and guns they should take with them than the possible
finding of Peter's brother or Peter's own change of fortune.
Lydia, listening at the door before she went to bed, for no particular
reason except that her aunt had forbidden it, decided that her master
and Captain Ogilvie were planning a sporting expedition
together--'which means dullness and aunt for me for a few months to
come,' said Lydia, with a sniff.